冷戰時期，國家形象的議題總不如國家安全議題來得受到重視。冷戰結束後以及伴隨著全球化的來臨，國家形象議題逐漸受到關注，中共更視之為其安全與發展的核心要素。在21 世紀初期，中共非常重視國家形象的重塑，因為主要在於欲擺脫1990 年代以來被國家社會所認定的如中國威脅論、踐踏人權、是不負責任的大國等負面國家形象。中共建構新國家形象的方式並非傳，而是以公眾外交方式，，透過如媒體、網路、電影、文化等手段，讓其他國人民能夠真正了其本意，扭轉被其他國家誤解而形成的負面國家形象，進而形塑正面國家形象。至今，透過幾項重大的全球國家形象排名調查，發現中共運用公眾外交重塑新國家形象的努力已獲得初步成果。

During the cold war, the issues of national security were more emphasized than national image. After the cold war and the coming of globalization, national image has been a focus point gradually and China has regarded it as key elements of its security development. In the early 21st century, the reasons why China stresses on the reconstruction of national image are to break away from the negative images such as China’s threat, trample on human rights, and irresponsible great power since 1990. The way China establishes new national image is to adopt public diplomacy instead of traditional interaction between governments. Basically, public diplomacy means the government predominates and adopts approaches of soft power such as media, the internet, movies and culture towards other countries’ people to really acknowledge its original meaning of this country, and to reverse bad impressions which could be caused by misunderstanding before. Through recently some surveys of national image ranking in the world, we find that China in positive image ranking is rising progressively. In other words, Chins has preliminary achievements of reconstruction of national image by means of public diplomacy.